That it also happens to be a custom bagger built by Shannon Davidson of The Chopp Shop in Taylorsville, North Carolina, is no surprise. Shannon always supplies admirers of saddlebag-equipped art with my custom bagger qualifications of high-tech, high-style, and I think I can safely assume, high-cost, with each and every build. Hey, taking an expensive late-model Harley-Davidson touring model and replacing just about everything that’s there with one-off custom pieces and parts before handing the bike over to a painter who might just run up the initial cost of the bike again is certainly not for the faint-hearted. I will say one thing and that’s Shannon always delivers what he promises.

  If you’re going for the full-on, kinda-over-the-top customized body style, you couldn’t do much better than the latest incarnation of Harley’s beloved, but sometimes misunderstood Road Glide. In the body wars, the Road Glide’s frame-mounted fairing provides more fairing area for customization and paintwork and working around those instantly recognizable, love-‘em-or-hate-‘em, dual headlights is a challenge. This is not the first time Shannon’s knocked on the Road Glide’s door to get a donor to makeover.

Barnett’s Magazine Online has showcased a couple of his Road Glides in previous articles that you can check out by clicking here and here to see his custom progression. If they were graphed out stylistically, it’d be a smooth, yet steady rise while still being rideable.

   Yup, Shannon’s another big wheel bagger builder claiming to make road-rideable, all-out custom baggers and I honestly tend to believe him. He’s always messing about on bikes like this in YouTube videos and looks to be enjoying himself. For this one, though, he might have had a little more than just cruising in mind as it’s packing a Harley 120R motor that puts out a solid 135hp with corresponding torque numbers to match in stock form. Spruce it up a bit like here and who knows. And no, I’m not referring to the Diamond Cut cylinders and heads which do spruce it up, but to a free-breathing air cleaner and that bastard of a 2-into1 exhaust that looks like a partial refuge from a ’40 Willys straight-axle gasser’s set of headers. Harley’s 120R pounding away through that exhaust must be the reason there’s so many speakers on this bike.

   Okay, okay, I say that in jest as it would be the aural equivalent of the weasel-murderboy, Phil Spector’s legendary Wall of Sound. I don’t like Phil Spector, but I love the idea of a wall of sound. With a hopped-up engine letting it all hang out through that cool SOB exhaust and a hopped-up audio system making itself known through big-ass speakers, this bike could potentially murder you with sound. Hopefully in a good way and maybe better one at a time. That exhaust sound is all you need and then some once you’re underway.

  One thing Shannon likes to do is keep everything in-house as much as absolutely possible. Whether that’s frame mods or bodywork or paintjobs or whatever, Shannon likes to keep a watchful eye on everything so that it meets his customers’ standards, show standards and most importantly, his own standards. A stickler for detail, there’s not an extra piece of frippery on this bike just for the sake of, ah, frippery. Obviously there’s air suspension front and rear to not only let the fairing seemingly rest on the front fender like a dog puts their head down on their front legs to rest, but to get it as low as the electric center stand can handle. Obviously that’s pretty damn low by Jack’s pics.

  The make-it-or-break-it of any custom bagger is still the paintwork and finishes. Shannon provided a nice contrast of machined black finish wheels, engine, etc. of all the hard parts of the build with his paint scheme that reminds me of freestyle jazz with a spray gun and airbrush as his instruments. The choice of colors is tastefully in your face and yet not annoying in any way. There’s a lot of it over the stretched and extended body pieces huge surface area along with some shocking skull-wearing-a-crown graphics over the front of the fairing and what once was a windshield. I’m not sure what came first, the dual Harley Road Glide Daymaker LED headlights with their unusual internals or the skull idea, but the skull eyes and  LED headlamps somehow seem to mimic each other with an otherworldly set of eyes on what’s ahead.

   The rest of the graphic flow reminds me of a cloud weather pattern shot from space of finely controlled art work that seems to be constantly moving over and around the bodywork. I especially like the Bar & Shield logo that looks like it’s sitting under a four-inch deep layer of glass. Man, painters today can really pull stuff out of a hat you never dreamed possible. There’s a helluva lot going on here when you get up close, but it never looks busy ─ kinda jazzy. If yellow and black do it for you, this is a clear case of extreme artistic competency that should look good years from now. Can’t say the same about those unfortunate neon colors of the ‘90s.

   Shannon Davidson is keeping his finger on the button of what’s hot and happening in the custom bagger world with bikes like this one and a whole lot more. If your fancy has been tickled, you can reach him via his website http://thechoppshop.com/ or The Chopp Shop’s Facebook page.